Reality 4.1 Review

Posted on October 21, 2015 by Jim Willey

I’ve written, rewritten, performed delicate surgery, and ultimately torn up this review a number of times now. I don’t want to be the negative reviewer guy, but what it comes down to is that I’m just not very impressed with Reality 4. Sure, we have some nice features introduced since Reality 2, such as procedural textures, and SSS, but I’m just not sold (more on that later). There are many happy Reality users out there, but then there are the others like me, skeptical, on the fence, indifferent. So, I’m not saying Reality is bad, just that it’s not my beverage of choice.

Metropolis CPU 20 mins

Before moving on I should point out now that I’m writing this review for the DAZ Studio (Windows 7) version using a i7 4770 and two GTX 780ti cards (not AMD cards). For most GPU renders I stuck with using the 780 in the secondary slot as using the first or both resulted in slow system response. All renders in this review are raw from Reality for the purposes of test (sorry, no pretty ones here).

LuxRender Speed Increases

Given my outlook of Reality I was still quite excited by the news of Reality 4.1 and all the talk of speed. Speed increases are a huge selling point for me when it comes to LuxRender, and in this regard Reality 4.1 is a solid point release. 4.1 gives access to some of the latest advances of LuxRender 1.5, which is great. We see some nice acceleration on many recent CPUs, and we get a greatly updated OpenCL based engine, which is now well on the way to containing all the features of CPU LuxRender.

CPU Extra Boost 19 min A close examination of shows the stark differences between bidirectional and standard path tracing.

CPU Extra Boost 19 min
A close examination shows the stark differences between bidirectional and standard path tracing.

There are a number of caveats with these speed increases. First: CPU and GPU “boost” modes only support Path “mono-directional” renderer (depending on the type of scene being rendered this may or may not be an issue). Boost seems to be one of Paolo’s own “homebrew” tweaks to Lux render settings. Two: There are slight (and sometimes not so slight) render difference between OpenCL and standard CPU modes. I’ve noticed this with glossytranslucent materials, particularly when coupled with the homogenous volume for SSS. More importantly, there are issues with geometry artefacts at lower levels of subdivision. These issues appear to be particularly noticeable on models that heavily rely on subd methods for controlling shape, such as the Genesis figures (fixed as of 4.1.1).

Reality 4: A Mix of Good and Bad

Reality was my introduction to physically based rendering, which completely spoiled me for biased options. Even the pretty Monte Carlo GI in LightWave felt like slumming it afterwards. What spoiled my interest in Reality, as a bridge to LuxRender, was Luxus. Luxus is a huge ‘effing mess in its implementation (in to DAZ Studio’s user interface), but it has a number of points that, in my mind, and to a good number of others users, makes it superior. Probably the most significant of these points is that it exposes the controls for just about every feature of LuxRender.

CPU left, OpenCL right. Both metropolis. Again we see that CPU is still king in terms of quality.

CPU left, OpenCL right. Both metropolis, and both with identical material settings. We see that CPU is still king in terms of quality.

Luxus beat Reality (3, Poser) to the punch when it came to offering options for subsurface scattering, and with all the extra render and material features I could forgive that Luxus was spread all over the place with huge ugly lists of options (some of which even the hardest core of the hardcore would rarely touch). It’s a raw, barebones sort of plugin, but it makes up for it in power. I had hoped that Luxus would shake up the Reality trajectory, but every release of Reality has been an evolution of the earlier product (which, depending on perspective is either good or less good). Maybe Luxus didn’t hurt Reality, maybe Paolo (Mr Reality) never saw the endless blog and forum posts that pointed out the power aspects of Luxus. Maybe these “elite users” aren’t a big enough porting of Reality users. Whatever the reason, Paolo is happy to tell us how we should be using LuxRender.

Reality on Right, Luxus on left. Both are flawed renders but Luxus gives many more options when setting up glossy translucent materials. Texture control maps are great for subtle tweaks.

I love that Luxus lets us tweak render settings, access multiple subsets of rendering engines. I love that it gives us sensible access to the basics such as glossy translucent surfaces and volumes. Yes, I know Reality has these surfaces and volumes, but even then Reality gives us the “light version”. Why, in this wondrous modern day and age, or we not given the option to input textures in to our absorption and scattering slots? Why is Reality lingo inconsistent with LuxRender lingo? Why does it require google to learn how to setup a glossy translucent surface specifically for Reality? The manual is obscenely vague on this process.

One would assume the glossy trans would be sitting right next to glossy and matt materials, but nuh-uh. We unlock this obscure material via volumes. Why? And why is there a separate tab for volumes in the first place? Yes, I guess it might make it easier to share volumes between different surfaces, but what about good old copy past? After all, we are probably going to have to tweak those volume settings from one model or character set to the next.

OpenCL having a fit on left. CPU doing weird stuff on right. Presumably the patchy areas in the CPU image is working to clear noise (noise aware).

Reality has gone a good distance on squashing some strange idiosyncrasies and quirks, but these seem to be rooted in Paolo’s design process and ideas about how things should be, both in terms of design and how users should relate to LuxRender

To cut through it all, and paraphrase so many posts I’ve seen on the subject, Reality is great for novices and those that just want to get on with the business of rendering. If Reality were a book it would be “LuxRender for Dummies”. This is certainly not a bad thing. Many of the render settings are superfluous for many users, as are texture control maps, but for hardcore render geeks and artists that really want to push their work to the next level, it is limited. There, that’s it! Reality is limited.

Final Thoughts: Reality 4/4.1 and LuxRender

Reality’s Good Points

Reality is great for new users, and those that want to render without having to worry about a huge list of engine configurations.
It supports a good chunk of what LuxRender has to offer
It is relatively easy to work with (though with some frustrating quirks)
Some love the Reality GUI
Speed increases
Procedural goodies

Reality’s Bad Points

The first point on the list isn’t about the program so much, but this seems rather big to me. On the Reality “Details” page there is one mention of LuxRender, and it’s all the way down the bottom of the page. This seems to be a systematic tactic taken on other pages on Preta3D.

“Reality is a rendering solution that extends DAZ Studio and Poser providing the most advanced Physics-Based Rendering system in the market.”

Is it just me, or are we correctly attributing the awesome rendering power here? Let’s give Paolo the benefit of the doubt and say he’s concerned making too much out of the external render engine (which Preta3D has little to do with) will unnecessarily scare people away. Something like that?

Reality hides many of LuxRender’s rendering and material features (more so the former). Some of these would be very beneficial to intermediate and advanced users.
Reasonable manual
Reality GUI – though considerably improved since Reality 2 (first version I used)
Convoluted glossy translucent and volume setup
Would love to see more of the procedural options available for use in the diffuse channels (as opposed to being strictly for displacement).
Manual has some serious limitations and oversites
Reality lingo is not always consistent with LuxRender spec
Does not include the LuxRender environment camera (why?)

On LuxRender Speed Increases

Metropolis CPU is still by far the sharpest tool in the LuxRender arsenal. Comparing OpenCL, accelerated, and “Extra Boost” render side-by-side with CPU renders will often be as day is to night. Sometimes speed just isn’t worth it. OpenCL just isn’t there yet, but we are so close!

If you have a reasonable NVIDIA card LuxRender might not be the best option, certainly not in all situations. See the next post for a head-to=head LuxRender vs Iray.

On Luxus vs Reality

For the sake of final balance it is necessary to make a notes on Luxus in its current state.

Has not been updated in quite some time. As a result it doesn’t support all LuxRender’s latest features, though it does include text boxes to input code.
Its incorporation into DAZ Studio makes an art of mess.
Poor documentation.
Bug where Luxus somehow fails to export materials. A very frustrating bug.
Exports scenes to a temp folder (that wipes on closing DAZ Studio). However, this can be changed.
No environment camera (why?).

In short, I would love to see this plugin updated and tidied up. In its current state Reality is the better plugin for most users. You can pickup Reality 4 for DAZ Studio and Poser from most DAZ/Poser community brokerages including DAZ and directly from Pret-a-3D.

Genesis 3: Victoria 7 Review

Posted on July 13, 2015 by Jim Willey

So here we are with Victoria 7 in our runtimes! Wow, feels as if I’ve barely unpacked Genesis 2, but yes indeed it has already been 2 years since the review of Victoria 6. Looking back on all the DAZ Studio scenes floating about my hard drives and bits and pieces created for the figures it is clear I had lots of plans that involved Victoria 6 and her Genesis 2 cohort. Creative procrastination seems to have taken a toll. Anyway, all that in the past, the recent release provided a perfect excuse to ignore as much else as possible to have some solid DAZ Studio time.

The first thing I noticed about the Victoria 7 unveiling was that the content pickings were a lot slimmer than with 6. Less characters and texture sets, less hair and wardrobe options. So, not a bonanza this time around but there was some useful products at release. As with V6 I wasn’t particularly interested in either the “Starter” or “Pro” bundles, but unlike last time I actually stuck to my guns and bought just the base character with a few choice products. For me, the body and head morph packages are a must (I still feel strongly that these items should be the core of any “pro” bundle).

Genesis Out of the Box

With this generation of characters it is clear that Iray is a core component of DAZ Studio’s future. All the products I purchased loaded by default with Iray materials. Not having an nVidia card my use of Iray has been limited, though I have some nice renders (small and time expensive) from it running on pure CPU.

Victoria 7 rendered, sitting in the "star room" modeled in lightwave.

Textures and Materials

When attempting quick renders with default settings for the Victoria 6 review I was frustrated with the texture set and material settings. Lots of work was required to get results I was happy with (V6 HD ended up coming out with the goods on this count). Thankfully, V7 comes with good textures and material configurations. That’s not to say I didn’t play around to get things closer to what I want, but the process was much less frustrating (don’t forget to gamma correct!).

Another thing I’m really happy about is the simplified material zones and selections. The arms and hands; legs and feet; hips, torso, neck, nipples and head have been merged into simplified respective material zones. No longer do we have to worry about selecting all parts of limbs, etc to edit materials quickly. This is particularly beneficial when working with other 3D packages. Going through and reapplying the same textures over and again was painful business.

Sci-fi rendering of Victoria 7 using 3Delight, UberEnvironment and UberShader.

Victoria 7 with V6 Sci-fi Suit auto-fit. 3Delight render.

Auto-fit

With the somewhat limited selection of content right now, it is great to see DAZ continuing backwards auto-fit compatibility, if only with G2F. Due to the similarity in shape, Victoria 4 shirts, pants, and hair work reasonably well (go for tighter conforming apparel), but forget about boots and shoes. Genesis stuff is simply a no-go.

Victoria 7 with V4 hair and clothes auto-fitted

Victoria 7 Figure, Topology and Rigging

The Mesh

As we’ve come to expect of our Victoria figures, we find Miss 7 likes to visit the gym and has less than convincing breast implants. Victoria 7 conforms closely to idealised artistic proportions, particularly when compared to Victoria 5, which was very different to the other popular incarnations. In this regard V7 is much like V4 and 6, though more delicate and perhaps slightly more detailed than both. The V7 base mesh has fewer polygons than the previous versions, but like V4 an d V5, is constructed entirely of 4 point polygons. Of course lower poly isn’t an issue. With the now ubiquitous subdivision surfaces we can get a lot more from a lot less.

Left to right: V5, V7, V6

Expanded Rigging

One of the major upgrades with Victoria 7 is the expanded rigging, particularly the face, which allows for greater articulation of expression. Up till now we’ve had to rely on predefined morphs and dials for expressions (or creating them with 3^rd party modelling tools). Additionally there are additional bones in the hands and feet, again allowing for greater pose control. Oh, and I almost forgot! We can wiggle ears now too. I expect this will be very handy for artists that work with a lot of animalistic and alien characters.

Victoria’s new bones.

Weight-mapping

DAZ 3D have opted to move from TriAx to General (Dual Quaternion) weight-maps. This one is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, this means that we can move Genesis 3 figures into 3^rd party animation packages and game engines without having to create new weight maps; on the other hand, TriAx is much more flexible, allowing for multiple maps to control mesh deformation over multiple axis of rotation, scale and bulge. General allows for just a single weight map.

The upshot of this is obvious. More people will get more use out of DAZ Studio and Genesis 3 figures. The downside, also obvious, we lose some detail in our poses – particularly a downer for those of us that keep our DAZ in DAZ.

No texture converting from previous generations

This will be a big issue for some artists when considering buying into the new generation. Due to the switch to the UDIM UV coordinate system there is no easy to implement “1 click” texture transfer solution (as there is with V4/M4 – V5/M5 etc). There are existing solutions, but none of them are perfect and rely on 3^rd party programs (C4D and Maya users have demonstrated such on the DAZ 3D forum).

Verdict

Victoria 7 and Genesis 3 is another step in the right direction. DAZ have made Genesis 3 more accessible and easier to use for more people, particularly with the switch in weight-mapping standards. The expanded rigging opens up creating new and varied facial expression to those not comfortable or interested using sculpting programs. In general, Genesis 3 is more articulate and flexible than any of the other popular Poserverse figures. Lack of texture/uv backwards compatibility, with the move to UDIM UVs, will frustrate some, as will the shift from TriAx weights, but these changes bring V7 and G3 into line with some important industry standards.

Genesis 2 Male Teen Jayden Review

Posted on January 21, 2014 by Jim Willey

Thanks to DAZ 3D for supplying Jayden

Genesis 2 Female has Teen Josie, and now DAZ have released Teen Jayden for G2M. Jayden is the first major character for Genesis 2 Male (after M6 of course). He comes with two texture sets (based on G2M UV’s), a full body and head morph, and a set of poses. He does not have unique UV mapping. But the base G2M and Michael 6 textures fit so closely that this is not an issue. As Jayden is crafted from the G2M base he is compatible with all the currently released morphs, so for those already invested in G2 there is a lot of versatility to be had. Jayden also comes with Poser companion files, so he is fully DSON compatible, but he does not have full Poser materials. For many users that prefer to customise, this is doubtlessly a non-issue.

Michale 6 UVs applied to Teen Jayden comparison.

I had hoped to have this review up before the product’s release, but I got caught up with rendering and playing around with materials. Before I knew it Tuesday 21^st (Jan 2014) was dawning and I had barely scrawled more than a few notes. First up I should point out that at this point I only have the basic Jayden package and not either of the bundles, which were not yet complete at the time DAZ contacted me. Hopefully I will have the pro bundle soon and will amend the review where necessary.

However, the Jaden package comes with plenty of meat. The Morph is solid. Jayden is an attractive and fit youth, though not overly so, which in my books is a good thing as this lends itself to greater versatility. The base texture set and the “bonus” Lance are both high quality. Lance has the look of a tough kid, perhaps street smart when loaded with the base material settings, but with tweaking there is a greater versatility there. In this way the set can be used for a great diversity of characters. Jayden’s default texture set is much more the usual fair one expects to see with a major DAZ character release – detailed, but crafted from someone that has very nice skin. Where’s pimples kid? I don’t know about you, but highschool was full of pimply days. Maybe this is a niche one of our adventurous content creators could tackle?

Teen Jayden custom shders sci-fi image. DAZ Studio render.

Light customisation of the base Jayden shaders. Minor postwork.

Jayden’s base texture set loads with materials configured with Age of Armour’s Sub Surface Shader Base. I’ve seen so many great renders done with this shader, but I just can’t get there. This is not to say the default configuration is bad, no, it is very good and many users will be happy to use it as is, but being a chronic tinkerer by nature it wasn’t long before I started to play around. Eventually I called it quits and got something rendered, but this wasn’t until I’d delved right into the Lance texture set, which I found much more interesting.

The Lance texture set loads with UberSurface settings. US is something I have a much better grasp of, though I found these textures themselves much more interesting than the base Jayden. Lance’s default SSS settings had me scratching my head. In all the lighting situation I set up there was little or no discernible difference between rendering with them on or off. Again, the settings here are perfect for many uses, but at default settings it is probably best to turn SSS off and save yourself some render time. SSS is one of those things I’ve been playing around with a lot in recent times so I spent a good deal of time getting this the way I wanted.

G2M Jayden teen. Scifi image DAZ Studio Render

Heavily customised Lance textures and shaders. Minor Post work.

Though I don’t currently have either the Starter or Pro bundle Teen Jayden I will remark that all the content that these bundles comes with appears very practical (and contemporary), and given the criticism previous DAZ releases have come under for including a lot of fantasy and/or sci-fi content, this seems like a positive move, but perhaps that depends on where you’re standing. For me, having a strong sci-fi bent, I prefer to see contemporary items than fantasy ones as they are often more easily incorporated into a sci-fi setting. Whatever product you select it will be a great addition to your Genesis 2 tool set.

Genesis 2 Male Teen Jayden. Lance Textures

Heavily customised Lance textures and shaders.

Review: The Complete Guide to DAZ Studio 4

Posted on December 29, 2013 by Jim Willey

I’d like to thank Packet Publishing for supplying me with a reviewers copy of The Complete Guide to DAZ Studio 4. Available: Amazon, Kobo, Booksamillion

Paolo Ciccone is a reasonably well known chap within the Poser/DAZ Studio community with his Reality line of products for both pieces of software. The Complete Guide for DAZ Studio 4 is not his first foray into training material. He has released his video “Make Your Own Reality”, “Blender Survival Guide”, produced the “Reality 3 Master Class” (Poser), and other assorted tutorials on YouTube. Right from the get-go I’ll say that Paolo is concise and clear in delivering his information, something that is always appreciated.

This book does not however live up to its title. It is not really a Complete Guide in any but the broadest sense. Perhaps, Complete Beginners Guide. To be fair, many of the subjects left out are reasonable exclusions, such as painting weight maps and other advanced content creation tools, which the vast majority of users will make little or no use of. There are some glaring omission, such as a discussion of render settings for 3Delight, DAZ Studio’s standard render engine. Many new users have trouble with these controls.

Another area Paolo leaves out is a thorough look at configuring common materials such as metal, glass and skin (or any materials at all) for 3Delight. The cynic in me sees Paolo going about setting up 3Delight as a stick-man ripe for LuxRender and Reality to come in and push over with its catalogue of precooked physically accurate materials. Indeed, the item that Paolo uses to demonstrate the inferiority of DAZ Studio’s materials seems to be picked based on its virtue of being so terribly configured (possibly configured for Poser?). Even a brief beginner oriented exploration of materials would have yielded something far superior.

Paolo claims to have attempted some level of impartiality with his discussion of the merits of 3Delight and LuxRender/Reality, but to me this is very suspect. Biased or not, 3Delight is the render engine DS is integrated with and the one most users will use, so it would have been great to see working with it covered in more detail.

The last area of criticism revolves around the inaccurate way shadow maps and raytraced shadows are introduced in chapter 5. Paolo states that raytraced shadows are always perfectly crisp and that in many situation shadow maps would be preferable. After reading this section I spent some time writing in great detail about how this was terribly wrong and how raytrace produced more physically accurate results, and blah, blah, blah. I won’t bother to reproduce that information here as Paolo produces correct information in following chapters. Why not start out with correct information though?

Other than these criticisms the book is, as already stated, presented in a concise and easy to digest manner. There is no waffle, just good solid information.

Putting together a quick scene and navigation DS

complete guide 1 Chapter 1 introduces us to the basics of the DAZ Studio interface and how to tweak the layout for a more rapid and open workflow. We’re also introduced to loading content, Genesis, and auto-fitting clothes and hair.

Shorter shortcuts

Chapter 2 follows up on the user interface tweaks by showing us how to shorten unnecessarily long shortcuts. For me, even as someone who has been using DAZ Studio for a number of years, Paolo’s tweaks are very useful.

Posing Genesis

Chapter 3 deals with posing, and covers the many tools we have at our disposal for creating just the look we need. Paolo also offers up some tips for making poses look more realistic (not like rigid plastic figures). Chapter 4, a nice progression from the previous Genesis focused chapters, covers the creation of unique and interesting characters by mixing and matching Genesis based morph packages and characters.

Basic scene construction, lighting and rendering

Chapter 5, while introducing some questionable information about the properties of raytraced shadows, offers up a lot of great information on the fundamentals of lighting and composition. Paolo talks about camera positioning, lighting and the role shadows play. There is also some useful information on rendering.

Content Installation and Content Brokerages

Chapter 6 is all about finding and installing content, free and otherwise. We are taken on a good look at the big three stores that most DAZ and Poser users will visit. The information about DAZ 3D is somewhat outdated as the site has changed a good deal since this section was written. There is a section on installing content with DIM later in the book.

Chapter 7 fixes up the incorrect information about shadows introduced in chapter 5. There is a lot of great introductory information about lights and settings, cameras and adjusting depth of field and the effects focal length can have on an image. There is a lot more general 3D basics information and stuff about navigating DS in here too.

Building a Scene

Chapters 8 builds on elements already explored in earlier chapters covering scene construction, character posing, conforming clothing, fixing poke through. There is a reasonable explanation of DAZ’s default shader properties and how to edit them, but there is no demonstration of how to produce a reasonable material though. This is a shame as even the basic shader in DS can produce some nice looking metal and plastics, and depending on style, can deliver reasonable skin.

Lighting for 3D

Chapter 9 has more detail on light as we are walked through the process of lighting a rather nice final image, so lots of good pointers here including the incorporation of some techniques used in traditional film and photography. Paolo touches on monitor calibration, a topic which any artist with a little experience under their belt will know is of significance importance. It is a shame that only software/hardware solutions (that cost money) are mentioned when simple DIY approaches, which are more than sufficient for most users, are not acknowledged.

LuxRender and Reality

Chapter 10 gives a solid introduction to LuxRender and Paolo’s baby, Reality. For those that are unfamiliar with LuxRender it is a physically based and unbiased render engine. This means it calculates light and its interaction with materials as accurately as possible/practical, and therefore produces images that are usually more-or-less accurate. Here we find out, that while physically accurate materials can be produced for 3Delight, it is an incredibly involved process. Lux and Reality, on the other hand, offer these delights from the get-go.

I felt Paolo fell far short of his stated intention for objectivity, but can we blame the guy? Reality is his baby and it is a fine bridge between DS and Lux, which in itself is an amazing piece of free software. Maybe I’m just touchy so many in the DS/Poser community seem to be buying into the myth that 3Delight can’t do realism, or that it is so terribly hard. This is not the case. Yes, creating physically accurate materials does require a lot of knowledge, but getting to that “close enough is good enough” is not so hard at all.

Regardless of any bias, LuxRender and Reality are worth considering for any DAZ Studio user. Lux is an increadibly complex and powerful render engine, and Reality does a lot to simplify the process of working with it. Though even then, Lux is not always easy to work with and does require a good deal of trial and error, visits to the forums and the Wiki.

Content Creation for DAZ Studio

Chapter 11 takes us into basic content creation, from exporting a template figure (Dawn in this case) from DAZ Studio, to modelling a basic dress with Modo (complete with UV mapping), and then finally bringing it back to DS where it is rigged and prepared for use with Dawn. While Paolo uses Dawn and Modo to demonstrate the workflow, the basic principles can be applied to any weight mapped DS native figure (such as Genesis), as it can be applied to any 3D modelling software. Through this chapter we see that taking the plunge into making our own content isn’t really that scary.

Animation The DAZ Studio Way

Chapter 12 explores the basics of animation, and the idiosyncratic approach that DAZ Studio adopts. We are also introduced Keymate and Graphmate which bring some much needed tools found in more complete animation software. This chapter contains so much useful information for anyone considering a foray into animation, to avoiding common time consuming disasters, and encoding final sequences for playback.

The Complete Guide to DAZ Studio 4 – Conclusions

The Complete Guide to DAZ Studio 4, might not cover everything new users will need to know, and it has little to offer seasoned users, but it is a solid starter for any new user. This book answers so many common questions, and will shave days, weeks or maybe even months off the usual flailing about process. I would have no problem recommending the book for those new to DAZ Studio.

For seasoned users there might be a chapter here or there that offers a reasonable introduction to subjects they have not ventured into (such as LuxRender, content creation, or animation), but for those more advanced users looking to branch into a new area there might be more complete sources out there.

Available: Amazon, Kobo, Booksamillion

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